The Name Game

I'm sure most parents would agree that deciding upon a name is an exciting, but difficult process. A name that might be adorable for a baby, may sound silly for an adult. And a name that is cool for a teenager/young adult in school, could be a bit too wild for a resume. And, finding one that we BOTH love, not just like, is another challenge. And then you have to brainstorm all of the ways that your child will possibly be tormented with the name that you chose for him/her, because as we all know, kids can be cruel.

When Luke Adam was little he was teased by being called, "A-dumb." He also got annoyed when kids would continually say, "Adam, where's Eve?" or make Luke Skywalker jokes. I was called "Dick Tracy", "Spacey Tracy", and "Trashy Tracy" (thanks to a Garbage Pail Kid). All things considered, our parents did a pretty good job and our names weren't the butt of too many jokes.
A couple of middle names for boys that we have been throwing around are Asher and Axle. If we go with Asher, our kid will definitely be called "Ass-er" and a friend of ours pointed out that Axle sounds a lot like "asshole" when you say it quickly. Tough decision! I kind of have the "sticks and stones" mentality. Won't kids always find something to tease about? It will toughen our child up!

One aspect of naming that I am a little crazy about--OK, a lot crazy about--is name popularity. As a teacher who often has multiples of a name in my classroom, and someone who was lucky enough to go through school without EVER having another kid at school with the same name, I am thoughtful of coming up with a name that is not too popular. I do not want our child to have to be called by their name plus their last initial. Nor do I want teachers and friends to invent nicknames so that there won't be any confusion between my child and another child with the same name. I have nixed some names that we liked simply because they were on the Social Security's Top 100 Most Popular list. (If your child's name is on the list, please understand that I do not think you are a bad namer. Most people do not-and should not-care about this as much as I do. It is a weird obsession of mine.) The only problem with the list is that it is from last year. You have to be somewhat of a psychic to predict what will be popular in the future. For example, if we have a girl, our daughter's middle name will definitely be Rose, after my mother and Adam's grandmother (Helen Rose). We went to see "Sex and the City" a couple of nights ago and the character Charlotte named her daughter Rose. Adam spun his head around toward me and said, "that name is going to shoot up the popularity list!" Darn it!

Here is the Social Security website if you are interested:
http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi

One last comment on naming--it is impossible to please all of the people all of the time. Sharing our name ideas with our loved ones (especially my family who always tells you what they REALLY think) has proven to us that not everyone is going to love the names we choose. Adam, who has a way with words, always says, "opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one." I couldn't agree with that statement more. I love hearing people's honest opinion about some of our name possibilities, because sometimes they alert me to negative things about the name that I never thought of. Ultimately though, Adam and I are the ones that have to decide for our little baby what he/she will be called for the rest of his/her life. Poor baby--I hope we do an OK job.